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Wednesday, December 28, 2011

You may never have heard of the upcoming NASA Senior Review, but it may have as big an impact on planetary exploration in the coming decade as any mission selection except possibly the approval of a Flagship mission to Mars or Europa.

First, though, some background. When a mission is first approved, its budget includes funds for operating the spacecraft in flight and initial analysis of the scientific data. The period of flight covered by this budget is known as the prime mission. Once the spacecraft completes the prime mission, there's usually years of life left in it to go to new targets (such as the flights of the Deep Impact and Stardust spacecraft to second comets) or to continue collecting science at the prime target (such as the rover Opportunity at Mars or Cassini at Saturn). These mission continuations are called extended missions.

NASA has to budget substantial funds to operate its many planetary and other science missions in their extended missions. Generally the costs of these extended missions aren't well publicized (likely because NASA and the press reasonably assume few people in the public care). However, we know that the Cassini mission in its current extended mission costs about $60M per year (probably near the high end) and the EPOXI (formerly the Deep Impact) mission costs about $5M per year (probably near the low end). Cassini could operate through 2017, so the rest of its extended mission will cost ~$300M (assuming flat budgets). The EPOXI mission will cost around $45M if its fuel holds out for a 2020 asteroid flyby. Compare these costs to the $425M dollar cost of a new Discovery mission.

Then consider the list of missions that are in or will enter extended missions in the next two years:

To decide whether or not to continue funding an extended mission NASA holds Senior Reviews. These panels evaluate the potential scientific return of the extended mission against its costs. The panel can recommend continued funding as planned, enhanced funding, reduced funding, or mission termination. As I understand it, NASA provides a budget for of its science divisions for extended missions. The panel needs to recommend the mix of missions and their funding to fit within the budget.

Early in 2012, a series of Senior Reviews will be held that appears to cover all NASA's planetary, astrophysics, and heliophysics missions that are in or will enter extended missions by 2014. (I don't know if the Earth science missions will be included in this senior review.) As backdrop to this review, remember that each of these divisions are projected to face flat or declining budgets in the next several years. In addition, NASA will need to find funds in its declining budget from these programs to help fund the completion of the James Webb Space Telescope, the over budget successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.

The review panels have a tough job. Each of these missions continue to gather data for which there will not be a chance to gather again for many years or even decades. How do you rank, for example, the science that will be enabled by the next 1%* of Mars imaged at 0.3 m resolution by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter against the next 40+ planned Titan flybys by the Cassini spacecraft? (*In it's first four years of operation, the MRO's HiRISE camera imaged about 1% of Mars at this resolution.)

While NASA is still waiting to hear (or be able to publicly talk about) its future planetary program budget, the indications are that the budget for extended missions will be tight. Dollars reserved for extended missions will not be available to fly and build new missions.

In my next post, I'll look at what is at stake for one extended mission, the Cassini mission at Saturn.

My Google searches failed to find the website for the Planetary Science Division's Senior Review. (Either poor searching, or it's posting may have been delayed because the planetary budget appears to be in particular flux.) If you are interested, however, you can read the guidance for the Astrophysics programs' Senior Review along with results from past reviews.

Each extended mission team has to write a proposal to support its request for continued funding. The call for proposals includes this description of the process for the reviews:

Instructions to the Senior Review Committee (SRC):

In the following descriptions, “project” denotes a full mission or project in the traditional sense or U.S. participation on a mission led by an international partner. NASA HQ will instruct the Senior Review panel to:

(1) Rank the scientific merit of each project on a “science per dollar” basis (based upon expected returns during 2013 and 2014) in the context of science goals, objectives and research focus areas described in the SMD Science and Strategic Plans.(2) Assess the cost efficiency, technology development and dissemination, data collection, archiving and distribution, and education/outreach as secondary evaluation criteria, after science merit/usefulness.

(3) Based on (1) through (2), provide findings to assist with an implementation strategy for Astrophysics Division missions in extended operations for 2013 and 2014, including an appropriate mix of:

Projects continued as currently baselined; Projects continued with either enhancements or reductions to the current baseline; Project terminations.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Without planning it, almost all my posts for the last several weeks have looked at options for modest Flagship-scale missions, whether from NASA (Europa), ESA (Ganymede), or both jointly (Mars). That's largely by default -- there's little news for either small or medium-cost missions. For lower cost missions (<$500M), NASA will not select its next Discovery mission for several months and the next competition is likely two years away, ESA's next selection for a medium class science mission (roughly equivalent to a NASA Discovery mission) is years away, and Japan, India, and China continue developing their next missions. For medium scale missions(~$1B), I've not heard a date for the next NASA New Frontiers competition, and I believe that the agency is waiting to see the budget projections from the FY13 budget proposal before deciding when to select the next medium scale mission.

That leaves the modest cost ($1.2-1.5B) Flagship missions as the current topic of news. Scientists have identified three high priority worlds for future intensive investigations: Mars, Europa, and Titan. Fulfilling the identified high priority science goals for each will not come cheaply: $8.5B for a Mars sample return mission, $3-4B for Europa, and ~$4B for Titan (per Decadal Survey estimates). To help make these costs more manageable, engineers have found ways to explore Mars and Europa on what would be essentially the installment plan.

The Mars sample return program would be split across four missions and the Europa program would be split across three missions (including an eventual lander(s)). The four Mars missions would be a 2016 orbiter that provides a communications relay, the 2018 rover that would collect samples, a mission to retrieve and launch the samples into Martian orbit, and a mission to collect the samples from orbit and return them to Earth.

The Europa missions would be a multiple-flyby spacecraft that would collect high volume remote sensing data, an orbiter that would carry the minimum instrument set for measurements that could only be done from orbit, and eventually one or more landers.

So could Titan be explored in a series of smaller missions? The Titan Saturn System Mission Flagship proposal called for a highly sophisticated orbiter, a balloon platform for aerial surveys, and a probe to sample the atmosphere and a northern lake. As many of you already know, mission teams have already taken advantage of this natural division to propose three low cost missions.

Before looking into those missions, it’s useful to look at the advantages and disadvantages of Titan from a mission designer’s point of view (it’s scientific and exploration advantages are well known to readers of this blog). On the plus side, Titan poses a thick atmosphere that makes entry, flight, and landing easier than on any world except possibly our own. It is frigidly cold, but for either a short-lived probe or a long-lived probe with a nuclear power supply, that is likely not a problem. (In fact, the AVIATR plane depends on constant movement to bring cool air past its power units to keep from overheating.) Unlike Europa, there are no harsh radiation belts to fry electronics at Titan. And there are no Richter-scale technology developments needed to continue exploring Titan as would eventually be needed for a Mars sample return to launch the samples from the surface and retrieve them in Martian orbit.

On the negative side, Titan is far from Earth. This results in long cruises, typically around seven years, with mission operations costing $7-10M a year during cruise. On a $425M Discovery mission budget, that’s a significant piece of change.

Perhaps more difficult is that at those distances, data rates either must be low if a small antenna that could be carried by a probe or plane is used, or the spacecraft must have the power supply to sustain high bandwidth communications to Earth. It is for this reason that an attempt to define a lower cost Titan orbiter in 2007 determined that the lowest practical cost for an orbiter would be ~$1.5B. A less expensive spacecraft couldn’t support the data rate to return a high resolution map of Titan.

Despite these challenges, teams have proposed two Discovery class missions and one that fits between the Discovery and New Frontiers ($1B) mission classes. The inherent tradeoff for all these missions is that they accept low data rates to fit within allowable mission budgets among other tradeoffs that include smaller instrument compliments.

For the TiME Discovery proposal, which would land a long-lived probe on a Titan lake, the low data rate probably does not incur significant science tradeoffs. Its composition and physical properties instruments are inherently low data rate. The probe will carry a camera, but the number of pictures would likely be limited. (I also suspect that the view from the middle of an arctic lake under a hazy sky far from the sun is likely to be low contrast, which should enable efficient data compression of images.)

The following list compares quoted data return (some calculated on the back of an envelope from data in published documents, so all assumptions may not be the same) for one year of operation for different mission proposals. I’ve included a Martian orbiter for comparison.

In one sense, these numbers may be misleading. The AVIATR mission, for example, would employ elaborate procedures to allow scientists to determine which data to return. Each of its bits may be 10X to 100X as impactful as a bit from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. However, the high data rates of MRO have allowed extensive coverage of terrain types and monitoring that the 1GB of the AVIATR mission would not allow.

The message is that mission costs can be reduced, but there are few magic bullets. Reductions in cost come at the expense of capabilities, with the amount of data returned a key tradeoff. Since these missions are justified by the data they collect, this is a significant tradeoff.

If data rates are a challenge for Titan exploration, the relatively benign environment allows for missions to fly at cheaper incremental rates than for Mars sample return or Europa. For approximately $1.5B (if the proposer’s cost estimates are correct), NASA or another space agency could fly three missions to Titan. That is approximately NASA’s contribution for the 2016 and 2018 Mars missions or one of the new lower cost proposed Europa spacecraft. There would probably be some cost savings if one or more of the Titan missions were combined. The AVIATR plane mission would be greatly enhanced if it flew with an orbiter such as JET that could relay data back to Earth. The amount of high resolution imaging from the plane would increase many times over.

Two important caveats must be considered before getting too excited by visions of Titan missions. First, we haven’t seen independent cost reviews for these missions, and proposers have been known to be too optimistic. Second, we don’t know how these missions would rank scientifically in a mission selection competition. Would 1Gbyte of high resolution imaging from a Titan plane provide better return on the dollar than a sample return from a comet or a lunar geophysical network, for example?

NASA currently is committed to supporting the priorities of the Decadal Survey, which after funding the Discovery and New Frontiers programs, prioritizes the 2016 and 2018 Mars missions and if they cannot be flown, a Europa mission, and as third priority a Uranus orbiter. However, we are seeing a new level of creativity from NASA and the planetary science community in finding ways to continue exploration of the Solar System’s highest priorities. With the proposals on the table, Titan is in play as a target, either through individual missions or through a relatively inexpensive program for several low cost missions.

About Me

You can contact me at futureplanets1@gmail.com with any questions or comments.
I have followed planetary exploration since I opened my newspaper in 1976 and saw the first photo from the surface of Mars. The challenges of conceiving and designing planetary missions has always fascinated me. I don't have any formal tie to NASA or planetary exploration (although I use data from NASA's Earth science missions in my professional work as an ecologist).
Corrections and additions always welcome.